And Only We Can Know Its Fragrance
by Sigridhr
Summary: Spock didn't lie when he said he didn't know how to love. In way, he didn't even know what it meant to love. How to discern the difference between friendship, a desire for companionship, or simple like, and the something else that lay hidden in the words Nyota had spoken in the soft quiet of their room. Sequel to If You Should Take Me.


**Notes:**

This is a sequel to _If You Should Take Me_. I think you should be OK without it, but, I'd highly recommend reading that first.

This is a remix of the TOS Episode Dagger of the Mind, but it's been pretty heavily bastardized. I think it should be fine for anyone who hasn't seen the episode itself, since everything of relevance should be explained, but if you're spoiler-phobic there are definitely some plot points of the episode that get recycled here.

* * *

For most of us, there is only the unattended  
moment, the moment in and out of time,  
the distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,  
the wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightning  
or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply  
that it is not heard at all, but you are the music  
while the music lasts.  
– TS Eliot, The Dry Salvages

…

Spock has served aboard the USS Enterprise, under the command of James Kirk for precisely 56.43 days. 53.78 of them have not been disastrous.

The neural neutralizer was made for human minds, and his is much more ordered. It does not make him immune, however, and he carefully concentrates on keeping those parts of himself that he can away from Dr Adams' influence. He is adept at compartmentalizing, at partitioning the pieces of himself off until he is an assembly of movable, disparate parts that he controls and connects at will.

He feels his thoughts begin to scatter, torn to shreds like tissue paper by the neutralizer's relentless whir, and he hears Dr Adams' suggestion echo in the empty chamber of his mind, sinking deep into his bones in thick, slimy tendrils.

And then he feels nothing at all.

…

When he is little, Spock's mother reads him stories before bed, until one day he insists that fiction serves no logical purpose. She reads him non-fiction after that, sections from textbooks and published studies, with humorous anecdotes that seem to spring out of her as if something within her simply cannot bear the constraints of the bare facts alone.

He's astute enough, even at a young age, to understand the inherent isolation of his mother's life. He sees the echoes of it when his classmates look at him, and when his assignments are returned with assessments of resigned acknowledgement of his skills, tempered by a mention of his heritage. It is as if they cannot admit he is capable without qualifying it, without reminding him that he is lesser no matter what he does. But that, of course, is not logical, so he does not acknowledge it.

His mother is not logical either, or so he believes. When he tells her so, she corrects him thoroughly. She's angry about the way he has been treated, but as he listens he cannot help but dismiss her concerns. She is too angry, too clouded by her own feelings to assess the situation rationally. His teachers have no such encumbrance, and their assessments of him must therefore be based solely upon his performance. Nevertheless, he feels something warm unfurl within his chest at the sight of his mother's fury on his behalf, and it is followed swiftly by shame and derision for feeling anything at all.

He tries to explain her error. "I have consistently demonstrated above average test results," he says, spelling out the logic for her in a way he never has to for anyone else. "Their assessments acknowledge my improvement. As I continue to demonstrate an excellent grasp of the subject matter, they will see the irrelevance of mentioning my parentage within each report. I am not offended, mother, and neither should you be; there is no offense where none is taken."

Amanda just looks sadly at him, as if he is the one who does not understand. Much later, as he walks away from the Vulcan Science Academy the word 'disadvantage' ringing in his ears like a mantra, he begins to understand what she means.

"You are allowing your emotions to cloud your judgement," he says over and over, as if he can force her to operate on a level which he can match. His mother makes him feel inadequate, as if there are things she needs which he can never give. He loves her unconditionally, though he cannot say it. But he does not love her humanity and what it has made of him.

"My emotions are my judgement, Spock," she always replies. "They're part of how I divine right from wrong, what I will or will not stand for. They're part of how I assess people, how I approach them. They can be a hindrance, yes, but I couldn't function without them. I would not be myself."

"You would be better served by making such assessments rationally," he argues.

"There are some things that happen, Spock," she replies sadly, cradling his face in her palm. It's a fiercely intimate and affectionate gesture for a child past bonding age, but she has never given much care to the social restraints she considers unnecessary. "That we have to get angry about. That are so wrong, so immoral, that we need anger to gather the strength to stand up and fight back."

Years later he sees his world destroyed and his mother die at the hands of a madman, hears the screams of six billion people echoing in his mind, and he draws upon his anger – for her sake as much as his own – because he wants to see Nero burn.

It is not until she is dead that Spock understands fully the pieces of himself that belong to Amanda Grayson alone. He has never called his human heritage a disadvantage, but this is the first time he sees it as an advantage, because remaining sanguine in the face of Nero's madness would have meant death, to the Enterprise and to Earth, and it was not logic that gave him the strength to ram his ship into Nero's.

It is irrational to feel regret that he had not expressed his love for his mother when she was still alive. The human expression 'actions speak louder than words' is in evidence of their ability to understand the pointlessness of stating facts that are self-evident through action. But he knows as well that humans find emotional statements a comfort, and when he sees the look on his mother's face as she falls over and over again in his thoughts, he wishes nothing more than to comfort her.

He has always prided himself in his control, his desire to embody the Vulcan way. This is the first time that he truly has a sense of what he has lost by doing so, and it haunts the memory of his mother in his mind and rubs jagged against his every thought.

He remembers his teachers' inability to separate his achievements from his half-human blood, and wonders if there was not some logic in that after all.

…

After the dust has settled, he runs out of things to do. The Enterprise crew is grounded at the Academy while Kirk's promotion officially goes through, and repairs are made. Spock has, for the past three days, managed to keep himself busy at all hours, filing reports, co-ordinating survivors, assisting with repairs. It all comes to a grinding halt, and he finds himself alone in his quarters, oddly lost.

That is how Nyota finds him.

She holds him, in a gesture presumably meant to bring reassurance, but it simply makes him feel trapped. "What do you need?" she asks him.

He doesn't know anymore now than he did before, but he feels a childlike desire to wish everything back to the way it was. Nyota is determined to be proactive in her sympathy, to do something for him, to help. He wants to do nothing at all anymore. Grief flows through his veins like a paralytic, encasing him within his own mind. He doesn't feel Nyota's hands upon his skin.

What he needs is things to be the way they were, because no amount of logic can cure him of the sensation that he died that day with Vulcan, and his body simply doesn't know it yet.

In the end, he pushes her away, and she asks him once more, "what can I do?"

He cannot answer, because he does not know.

There is, however, a limitless patience to Nyota that isn't immediately apparent. She seeps into his life like a balm, softening the ragged edges of his mind so quietly and deftly he doesn't realise how much she's done for him until much, much later. She makes him eat at mealtimes, ensures he sleeps, ensures he speaks, ensures he meditates. She picks up the shattered pieces of his mind and helps hold them in place while he glues them back together again.

It's a curious process that she puts him through. It's far from perfect. There are moments where she seems to hover, oppressively, in spaces he desperately wants vacant, and she seems to thicken the air until he cannot breathe, full of pointless conversations about sensors and redundant systems that have a banality he simply cannot bear. Other times, he is alone in the darkness, unable to find any logic at all in his thoughts as they swirl, dark, angry and cold, and he feels her absence, irrationally keenly given he's seen her scant hours before.

But often she seems to sense precisely what he needs. She offers space and closeness in equal measure, with an ease and comfort in contradictory states of being that seems to be the hallmark – and the strength – of humanity. He knows he is grateful; he does not understand why. He is too focused on feeling nothing at all, in purging himself of the memories, and the accompanying sensations, of the destruction of Vulcan to spare time to pull apart the complex web of feelings he has for Nyota.

He believes that she understands, with the same calm, gentle acceptance she gives to his need to meditate, to his language and to his culture. He pretends he does not see the pieces of Nyota that bleed through her supportive façade, and the quiet moments when she holds out a hand for him to take that he cannot bring himself to grasp.

Later, when he remembers these flickering moments, he feels ashamed. Her hurt compounds his own. But he does not know what else he can do.

…

"I love you."

The words themselves seem to surprise Nyota as much as they do Spock, as if they'd slipped out of her without her consent. But she doesn't try to take them back. She just reaches forward and pushes the hair away from his brow, wrapping herself around him as if she's trying to physically echo the words with the shape of her body.

"I –" Spock says, but the words get caught in his throat.

Nyota's fingers run slowly up and down the length of his arm, but he feels the expectant tension in her body, and he knows he owes her an answer.

"I am not capable of love," he says.

She goes still against him, her face averted where it rests against his shoulder, so he cannot see her expression.

"Don't lie to me," she says at last.

Spock freezes then, staring straight up at the ceiling.

"I do not know how to love," he amends at last.

Nyota doesn't say anything, but he feels her slowly relax against him, and she does not leave. It is illogical, but he had been afraid that she would, and he is glad when she stays.

…

The most astonishing thing about the whole Van Gelder debacle is that it happened at all.

There are security measures in place to scan incoming cargo, there are security measures specific to the receipt of cargo from penal colonies, and there are security measures specific to penal colonies governing their storage and preparation of cargo. Somehow, in an incomprehensible lapse of judgement caused by a failure in each part of this procedural chain that – Spock notes, with some frustration – would never have occurred on a Vulcan ship, a stow away from the Tantalus Penal Colony has been beamed aboard the Enterprise.

Uhura is already notifying security details, her voice clipped with the same annoyance Spock is suppressing. Kirk's face is screwed up in obvious displeasure, but he, with a control Spock would never have credited him with before the last few weeks under his command, is issuing orders to put the ship on lockdown.

Of course, it is at that precise moment that the Tantalus escapee arrives on the bridge. He has the wild look of a cornered animal, feral and sharply dangerous in a way that sets everyone's teeth on edge, as he looks around the bridge.

"Which one of you is the captain?" he demands, holding out a phaser in a hand that is shaking too badly to aim properly. It doesn't matter – on the bridge, the probability that he would hit either someone or something vital was higher than a miss.

Kirk's voice is oddly and unnaturally calm when he speaks. "I am Captain Kirk."

They are all moving in slow motion, muscles tight in expectation. Spock walks quietly towards the intruder, gliding ghost-like up behind him.

"I want asylum," says the intruder. "Asylum."

"Not at gunpoint," Kirk replies, his expression neutral and his voice even. "Put the phaser down, and we'll talk."

"Asylum," the intruder repeats again. "Promise me, and I'll put the phaser down."

Spock is firmly of the opinion that negotiations are becoming repetitious. In a single motion, he compresses his fingers over the intruder's neck, compressing the nerves there and rendering him unconscious. He drops unceremoniously to the floor.

"Awesome," says Kirk, all traces of his earlier control gone as he looks at Spock. Nothing is perfect, Spock thinks, with a sigh, though the words sound oddly like they are spoken in his mother's voice.

The discussion is much more efficacious in sickbay, but only in a relative sense. The intruder's astonishing claim that he is Doctor Simon van Gelder, assigned as a physician to the colony, is born up by both the colony's records and by its Director, Doctor Adams. The fact that any attempt by Dr van Gelder to recall information about himself, or the colony, causes him evident and obvious pain is more disconcerting.

"What do you make of it, Spock?" Kirk asks.

"Perturbing," Spock replies, examining Dr van Gelder's brain scans over McCoy's shoulder (much to the latter's annoyance).

"Something isn't right with this, Jim," McCoy adds gruffly. "Dr Adams was very vague about the nature of the machine that caused Dr van Gelder's "accident". This is serious and traumatic brain damage – I'd like to know precisely what that machine was meant to be doing. I'm not familiar with anything we use now that could cause this."

"I concur," Spock says, turning to the captain. "I believe we should send a team down to the surface."

Captain Kirk lets out a long sigh, rubbing a hand over his face. "Dr Adams is hugely respected in the field," he says with a kind of weariness that makes Spock suspect he has already capitulated.

"Nevertheless," Spock says.

"Well," Kirk says with a grin. "Anything the two of you agree on is worth looking into in my books. Spock, I want you to go down there and poke around, see what you can figure out." McCoy opens his mouth, but Kirk beats him to the punch. "No, Bones, I want you here. I need more answers from Dr van Gelder – if things don't add up, we may need his testimony."

McCoy grimaces like a child denied a sweet, but agrees.

"And Spock," Kirk adds as a parting shot, "try to stay out of trouble."

…

Spock does not stay out of trouble, though he does try.

Doctor Adams is unhesitatingly accommodating, offering a personal tour of the institution. McCoy, with an odd, knowing grin that Spock can't quite decipher, sends Nurse Chapel to accompany him.

The penitentiary itself is utterly sterile, and has the same air of enforced calm he recognizes from some of the diplomatic events he attended as a child. There is a kind of slowness, a false contentment that permeates the air here, despite Dr Adams' promises of complete rehabilitation, and humane care. It feels instead oddly stagnant, running entirely contrary to the bold vivacity of human life aboard the Enterprise.

He is introduced to a former patient, Lethe, who has been rehabilitated to become a psychiatrist in the penitentiary. Lethe impresses Christine Chapel very much, but she raises in Spock the same odd, unsettling feeling he has had since he's arrived.

A feeling which comes fully to the fore when he is introduced to the Neural Neutralizer.

Doctor Adams describes Doctor van Gelder's accident in precise, detached terms. They are terms Spock himself might have chosen. But Spock has seen Dr van Gelder, seen him struggle in pain as he tries to speak his own name, read his personnel file which describes a man meticulous and principled, and Spock begins to believe he has a hunch that Dr Adams' cold description of how Dr van Gelder attempted to use the machine alone, late at night and at full strength, is not quite accurate.

Spock does not like hunches. It is the creation of a chain of reasoning, with pieces in the middle left absent. It is neither effective, nor logical, and yet, he cannot seem to quite put it aside.

Later, when he is proved right, he mentally makes a note to conduct a further study on the efficacy of hunches.

He takes nurse Chapel with him to examine the Neural Neutralizer without the supervision of Dr Adams. They had been told that the machine was safe at low levels, and simply functioned to calm patients and allow for mental 'reconditioning'. Spock sees little option but to volunteer himself to test the machine.

"Are you sure, Commander?" Chapel asks nervously.

"Do you foresee any difficulty in operating the machine?" he asks, settling himself in the chair in the centre of the room. It is the same bland crème colour as the rest of the facility, with bright lights creating an unnatural uniformity to the space that seems to strip everything bare. The Neural Neutralizer's interface hovers above the chair, a spinning disk meant to focus the patient's attention, which, presently, sits silent.

"No," she replies. "I don't think so."

"The low setting, if you please, Nurse," Spock says dryly. "I should not like to experience a repeat of Dr van Gelder's accident."

Christine laughs nervously, but her fingers on the buttons are sure and her voice is steady when she speaks. "Alright. I'll start you on the lowest setting."

"Provide a suggestion of your choosing," Spock orders. "Something simple."

The machine induces a preternatural calm not unlike meditation the moment Chapel starts it up. He hears her voice as if she is speaking from a great distance, and he has to put forth a great deal of effort to focus on it.

"You are hungry," she says.

It fades almost as soon as he hears it, and he's surprised to find he barely has the strength to hold on to it. He's even more surprised to find he is hungry.

He blinks as the Neutralizer whirs, powering down. "Fascinating," he says thoughtfully.

"Did it work?" Christine Chapel asks from the control room.

"Yes," Spock replies tersely, his mind calculating the scope of the machine's utility. After all, his mind is considerably more adept than that of a human, and the machine was at its lowest setting. It certainly seemed plausible that it could have caused the extensive damage to van Gelder's mind.

"We will try a more complex suggestion," he says, sitting back.

"Alright," Chapel says. "Same setting?"

"Yes," Spock replies.

She flicks a switch and the machine roars back to life, lulling Spock's mind into mindlessness.

Of course, it is at that point that Dr Adams comes in. Spock can't quite bring himself to connect all the dots in his mind, or summon up the necessity for action. He hears Dr Adams take control of the machine, but the fact is oddly detached from any meaning.

Nurse Chapel is screaming and struggling in the grasp of one of the prison's guards, but Dr Adams is still speaking in that cool, detached, almost Vulcan-like tone. His words, however, bear little similarity to the emotionless precision of Spock's people.

"They say Vulcans do not have emotions," Dr Adams says coldly. "I have always wondered. Let's find out, shall we?"

Spock feels empty and cold, but he does not know why.

"I regret that this is necessary, Commander Spock," says Dr Adams, then, his voice takes on a darker tone. "You are madly in love with Christine Chapel You would die for her, cheat for her, steal for her. There is nothing you would not do for her."

"I am madly in love with Christine Chapel," Spock repeats numbly. Dr Adams' words are tearing through his mind, ripping him to pieces from the inside out, and beneath it all he begins a flame begin to kindle, rushing through his veins.

Christine.

"You will remember nothing of this," Dr Adams says, cranking the machine up to full blast.

Spock screams.

…

Spock didn't lie when he said he didn't know how to love. In way, he didn't even know what it meant to love. How to discern the difference between friendship, a desire for companionship, or simple like, and the something else that lay hidden in the words Nyota had spoken in the soft quiet of their room. Words that lay underneath her requests that he eat something, that sprung from her fingertips when she pressed them against his, and that tumbled, unbidden, from her lips against his skin.

He doesn't know if he can match it. She has learned to speak his language, but he still stumbles over the syllables of hers. No matter how sure his fingers are, no matter how many times he uses them to wring soft gasps and cries from her lips, he knows there is something lost in translation.

He takes the only recourse he knows: research. He reads about loving "without complexities or pride", and "between the shadow and the soul." He reads, "in your most frail gesture are the things which enclose me, / or which i cannot touch because they are too near" and he feels empty and wanting, because he doesn't understand what the things are. "If ever two were one, then surely we," he reads, but they aren't one, not now, and he doesn't know if it is enough.

In Vulcan he reads the words of his ancestors, untamed and lascivious, and he wonders if this is what he would have been without his father's guidance. Words like, "inside you, and inside me, springs / a joining, the unfurling of a flower, / into whose petals I plunge, / heedless of its thorns."

In Swahili, it is the cold-hearted who are most deeply in love. To deeply love someone, is to be ice for their heart.

Spock is cold. But the blood of his people has always burned, and the thought of it repulses him.

…

He is dreaming.

There are hands on his chest, dancing over his ribs, sinking lower, lower. He feels lips against his hip, followed by teeth, teasingly scraping against the skin there. There are hands in his hair, a tongue in his mouth, licking a stripe up his neck, fingers tracing the tips of his ears.

He shudders, grasping blindly in the deep well of sensation for a warm body to hold on to. Instead a phantom tongue traces along his fingers, and his back arches as he barely keeps himself from crying out.

He hears the words whispered right into his ear, with an accompanying ghost of cool breath that raises goose bumps all over his skin. "Wewe ni wangu tu."

He cries out then, sharp and feral.

…

Nurse Chapel is shaking him awake, her voice high pitched in concern. "Commander, commander," she is saying over and over. The phantom hands of his dream morph into her hands and he reacts utterly without thinking and pulls her down into a deep kiss.

She goes rigid, pushing him away, but he's stronger. It is impossible for him to decipher why this feels unnatural, when every fibre of his being is screaming out in want of her. Christine, Christine, Christine beats over and over in his mind, in his heart, in his blood.

"Commander," she says again. "Dr. Adams made you feel this way. He put the suggestion in your mind. It's not real."

He doesn't hear her, not really. He is consumed and senseless.

The sensation that it is wrong grows and grows in the back of his mind, like a siren. He is mad. Every trace of Surak's teachings is gone from him, ripped from him, and he is base and mindless, like an animal.

"Commander," Christine says again, and her voice alone sends a shudder down his spine. He wants more poignantly than he has ever felt.

"Commander," she repeats, pulling his hands from her arms and squirming out of his grasp.

His fingers twitch reflexively, craving her touch. They tingle painfully, wanting, needing the sensation of skin on skin contact. His mind wants to reach out to hers, to hold on, to own her. His thoughts flicker, flashes of bare skin, of pounding, naked need. He closes his eyes and turns away.

"My apologies, Nurse," he says at last, ragged and hollow. The essence of himself has been ripped out leaving only a monster beneath. He tries to stuff it back down.

"It's not your fault," Chapel says compassionately. "It's alright, Commander."

It's not alright at all, but he does not say so. They both know.

…

It takes him 10.34 minutes longer than is acceptable to formulate a plan. He is appalled by his lack of mental faculties, but there is nothing that can be done at this point.

He sends Christine to disable the colony's shielding. Their first priority is to re-establish communication and transporter capability with the ship. He does not have time for anything else. Doctor Adams takes him for another session.

…

The fragments of control Spock has managed to reconstruct go completely out the window the moment he sees Christine Chapel. She has Captain Kirk and a security detail in tow, and she barely has time to get out the statement of the obvious, that she's disabled the penitentiary's security shield, before he loses his grip on himself and grabs her, kissing her furiously.

Kirk makes a shocked and half-impressed noise behind him, but Spock is utterly beyond caring.

"Stop," Christine says, when she pulls away. "Commander, you have to listen to me."

It doesn't get any further than that; Kirk intervenes. He pulls Spock away, and Spock turns around backhanding him across the face. Kirk takes it, surprisingly, in stride, pulling himself back up and brushing himself off as if he'd barely felt it (though there was already an ugly red mark across his cheek), and steps forward.

"Spock," he says in the same placating tonelessness he'd used with Doctor van Gelder. His phaser is out, though. It is enough.

Spock straightens. "I apologize, Captain," he says roughly, straightening his uniform.

Christine Chapel is explaining in the background, about the machine and Doctor Adams' suggestion, her words coming out almost so fast that they run together. Kirk is watching him carefully, but his expression softens slightly.

"Are you alright, Commander?" he asks.

"Yes," Spock says, tersely, his voice as brittle as he feels.

"Right," Kirk replies, with a forced lightness. "I think it's about time I paid a visit to Dr Adams. Spock, I want you to beam back to the ship."

Spock is about to protest, but the logic of the suggestion is inescapable. He is compromised – a word he is coming to dislike – yet again.

The captain reaches out and puts a companionable hand on Spock's shoulder and squeezes. "Go on, Spock. I'll find the bastard, I promise."

Spock nods. He's not sure he'd be capable of speech. Christine Chapel gives him a wide berth, and a pitying look. He stares at her as the beam of the transporter envelopes him, bringing him back to the ship. He feels want, certainly, but most of all, when he looks at Christine's compassionate face, he feels empty.

…

Spock manages to evade McCoy's attempts to keep him in Sickbay. He is more adept than any of McCoy's tools at reconfiguring his own mind – and, though pervasive, at the end of the day the Neural Neutralizer was simply exploiting the principles of hypnotic suggestion. He will eradicate its effects, in time.

He doesn't anticipate Nyota's presence in his quarters, though, perhaps, in hindsight, he ought have.

"Are you alright?" Nyota asks, concern written clearly across her face. She crosses the room in two quick strides, but stops directly in front of him, her hand outstretched in the air between them caught halfway towards his face.

"I have been discharged from sickbay," Spock says.

Nyota frowns. "That's definitely not a 'yes'." She looks him over speculatively, then says, "would you rather I stayed here tonight?"

Her presence fills up the space in the room, and takes his breath away, and his words catch in his throat. He is unacceptably emotional – compromised – by the Neural Neutralizer. But it runs deeper than that still. Nyota is still watching him, so close he could reach out and touch her. He cannot bring himself to say no.

She nods. "I'll stay," she says.

"The Neural Neutralizer was extremely effective," he says, walking stiffly over to the edge of the bed to sit down. "It is a remarkable piece of machinery, but also dangerous. It has been used unethically." He removes his boots, his fingers working of their own accord, oddly detached from the control of his mind.

"I know," Nyota says softly. "I received the comm call from Christine, and the Captain."

"He planted the suggestion in my mind," Spock says, turning to look directly at her. She is sitting, cross-legged on his bed, looking at him with the same open, kind expression she always uses now. He knows now what it reminds him of: it's the same as the tone Kirk uses to placate people who might be a danger. Calm, careful neutrality. Like she's on guard. "That I was in love with Nurse Chapel."

"I know," Nyota says again, carefully.

"I have done considerable reading on the subject," Spock says.

Nyota lets out a startled sound at that, and gives him a look of such undisguised fondness that he simply sits there, blinking, unsure how to respond.

"And?" she prompts after a moment, inching forward on the bedspread towards him.

"It was inconclusive," he says.

Nyota laughs. "What were you hoping to learn?" She tucks her legs beneath her, keeling in front of him, and her hand comes to rest on his knee.

"How to identify the precise feeling of 'love'," Spock says.

Her fingers squeeze tightly on his knee, and she's watching him intently now, lips parted in anticipation.

"Dr Adams described it as being willing to steal for someone, to cheat and to die for them. That there would be nothing that one would not do for them."

"Is that –" She breaks off with a pause, and then seems to shake herself. "Is that how you feel about Christine?"

"Yes," Spock says, frankly. "But it is empty. I would cheat for her, steal for her, or die for her. But I would not know why."

Carefully he traces the backs of her fingers with his own where they rest on his knee, and he hears the sound of Nyota's breath draw in quickly.

"I realized that I would also do those things for you. That I have been prepared to conduct our relationship contrary to regulations, at the risk of detriment to both our careers. But, more than that, that despite Dr Adams' influence, when I dreamed, it was of you."

"Spock," Nyota says, low and so overflowing with emotion that he feels overwhelmed by the fact that it is for him.

"I do not know if it is adequate," Spock says. "I still do not understand the poetry."

Nyota laughs and kisses him roughly, tangling his hair between her fingers and crawling into his lap. His hands go to her waist, tugging her skirt up above her hips as he pulls her downwards towards him. "It's more than enough," she says. "I wouldn't ask you for anything you aren't willing to give."

"I find that when you do that," Spock says, his breath catching as her hand drifts lower, "I am willing to give things even beyond my capabilities."

Nyota laughs again, and then shoves him backwards, sending them tumbling onto the bed. She crawls over him, her long hair brushing against his cheek, and says, cheekily, "So, this extensive reading… What precisely did you read?"

His eyes crinkling softly in answer to her wide smile, Spock begins to speak, "I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, / or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off…"

Nyota gasps, sinking back down onto him, and pulling him close, and he stops speaking, unable to remember the words. He finds he doesn't much care.

They are moving together, so close that every inch of his skin he can manage is pressed up against hers, but it is not enough. He craves closeness, to bury himself in her, in her kindness and her patience, to be a cold balm on her heart. His hands are at her meld points before he can stop himself, and he barely has time to whisper out a plea for permission before her hand is covering his and her mind opens up to him, bright and colourful and overwhelming.

He can feel the sensation of himself inside her, feel his own hands against the skin of her cheek as if it were her own. Nyota's mind is open and bright, full of laughter and sunlight, and it sings and wraps itself around him. He feels an overwhelming warmth and affection, and Nyota pours herself into him with a human recklessness and abandon, that takes him by surprise.

He catches snippets of laughter and tears, of childhood runs under bright stars, and afternoons in dorm rooms spent laughing, of breakups with first boyfriends, of close friends and lost friends, of deep poignant sorrow and soaring joy.

And, though it lacks any of the logic he has always aspired to, he feels at peace.

Inside you, and inside me, springs  
a joining, the unfurling of a flower,  
into whose petals I plunge,  
heedless of its thorns.

It lives within you and I alone,  
and only we can know its fragrance,  
or trace the shape of its petals,  
with our fingers.

Even if it fades away and dies,  
there will never again,  
be one like it, or you.

– Collection 5, Fr 16, Fragment of a Love Poem, T'Paal region

* * *

**Notes:**

Loving "without complexities or pride" and "between the shadow and the soul" are from Pablo Neruda's_ I do not love you as if you were salt-rose._

"in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, / or which i cannot touch because they are too near" is from e.e. Cummings' _somewhere i have never travelled_.

"If ever two were one, then surely we" is from Anne Bradstreet's _To My Dear and Loving Husband_.

_Wewe ni wangu tu_ - Swahili. Literally, 'whatever you are, you are mine', but more colloquially it would be something like 'be mine'. (At least that's my understanding, with my terrible Swahili skills).


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